Reasons Why
by CellarGangGirl
Summary: What could possibly make a man like Regulus Black defy someone like the Dark Lord? An insight into the mind of a scared boy wrapped up in the inner workings of a war he doesn't know how to fix. T for themes of death.


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, obviously. I mean really.

AN: I got the idea for this from a song and thinking about Draco not being able to kill Dumbledore. Hope you enjoy yet another one of my redeeming fanfics. R&R.

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><p>The room around him was a pit of darkness - he couldn't make out the green and silver colors elegantly covering the walls, but he knew they surrounded him; they suffocated him as they never had before. There was an intense urge, a pull rather like that of Apparating, that pulled incessantly at him. It was a tug in his heart, a voice in his head - it told him to leave his dark and dank bedroom, to cross the hall and step into a room of light, of levity and escape.<p>

He continued to sit on his plushly-carpeted floor. That was a room he'd not entered since he'd turned eight, and he wasn't about to go back now. He leaned back on the sturdy mahogany of his bed frame, his mind racing and thinking of nothing all at the same time. He supposed he should probably turn on the lights, but he knew it would likely give mother a reason to come in and check on him. For the first time he could remember, he didn't want to hear what she had to say.

His mind immediately produced the things he knew she'd say - he'd done the Dark Lord and his family an incredible service, she was so proud of him. He was so unlike his brother, his brother who'd turned his back on them and shamed the family. The tug in his heart started up again, pulling at least his mind to the room just across the skinny hall. The room had sat empty for quite a few years now. He was sure, however, that getting into it would be easy - his parents preferred to forget that his elder brother had ever existed, and until now, he'd been quite happy to go along with this manner of life. On any given day, he'd have walked past the door, completely ignoring the existence of it and the nameplate it bore. However, that could no longer be the way of things, and he didn't know what to do.

Were he in a normal family, he was sure that he could simply walk across the hall and barge into his brother's room. The normal brothers would bicker and squabble, but the older brother would help his younger sibling, whatever his problem was. However, he knew this was but a far-off dream for him. He was Regulus Black, and his family was not a normal family. They were the Blacks, Toujours Pur, and his elder brother Sirius had not occupied the room across the landing in a handful of years. The memory brought with it the distinct sound of his mother screeching all the way down to the family tree, where he had discovered the next day that his brother had been burnt off. No, he repeated to himself, they were not a normal family.

However, he knew now that there had to be a change, for himself if nobody else. His father was dead, his mother was the same as ever, and he'd just witnessed one of his schoolmates try to kill his brother not an hour ago. Merlin, he'd just sat there, watching Avery try to kill his _only_ brother. They had eventually retreated when more of Dumbledore's men had started showing up, but by then the damage was done, and it was irreversible damage.

He could no longer follow the Dark Lord, no longer expend himself to the oh-so-bloody-noble cause of killing whoever so much as spoke the name Voldemort. If he was being honest, which he could never be with his mother watching him, he honestly couldn't see why he was doing this anymore. Everything he wanted was slowly slipping out of his fingers, and he'd lost the reason why. Sirius had just been the last straw - he'd always hoped that his brother would come back one day, laughing and pointing at them all, explaining that everything, from the day he'd been sorted into Gryffindor, had all been one of his practical jokes. But he couldn't get the image of the Killing Curse missing Sirius' shoulder by a hair's breadth out of his head, and he couldn't help but wonder if Sirius had been right all along.

Time passed, but he was unaware of it in the dark of his room. He sat at the foot of his bed for an undetermined period of time - it could've been after minutes, hours, or days that he slowly rose, the house still silent around him while sunlight managed to find it's way around the heavy velvet curtains hung on his windows. His door creaked as he stepped out onto the landing. He stood there for a moment, staring at the nameplate bearing his brother's name.

Assuring himself that his mother was asleep in what he assumed was the early morning, he stepped up to the door. He turned the handle, noting that the door wasn't locked. He pushed it open, standing on the threshold for a second before a noise at the foot of the stairs woke him from his reverie. He stepped fully into the room, closing the door quietly behind himself as he heard the tiny feet of Kreacher step up onto the landing. The house-elf was probably just coming to clean the bust and portrait in the hall, he told himself as he continued to stand just inside the doorway. He didn't know where to go, to be completely truthful.

Where his own room was decorated in the grand silver and green of Slytherin house, Sirius had plastered his room with the ostentatious red and gold of Gryffindor. He was surprised at his brother's audacity; even more shocked that he'd gotten away with his choice of decoration. He was surprised, but ignored it, assuming Sirius must have put a powerful sticking charm to good use. He stepped forward gingerly. The door to the wardrobe across the room hung open, he could see a few shirts hanging within, a pair of pants lying forgotton and forlorn on the floor before it. He could see an issue of The Standard Book of Spells, Year 2 laying on the desk amongst an empty, upturned ink bottle and a used roll of parchment.

He made his way over to the bed and sat there carefully, trying not to dislodge anything. He thought he would've felt something, but the only thing he felt was betrayed. He wanted to blame Sirius for everything, but he knew better than that. It wasn't Sirius' fault that the Dark Lord had risen to power. Hell, it wasn't even his fault that he'd been sorted into Gryffindor. If there was anything that growing up in number twelve Grimmauld Place had taught him, it was that there were greater battles to be fought than those between siblings. You were supposed to keep your siblings close - the way cousins Bellatrix and Narcissa did. These times were not for those people who couldn't even keep their family close.

Regardless, Sirius had left, and Regulus felt he could admit to himself here, in a room so unlike the rest of his world, that he felt betrayed. Betrayed because Sirius had left him to fend for himself. Elder brothers were not supposed to do that. They were not supposed to leave you at the mercy of your parents, or fight on the wrong side of a losing battle. They were not supposed to quite literally put their lives on the line to prove that they were different than you. Sirius had never been daft though, and Regulus knew that there was more to the boy's self-endangerment than proving that he wasn't the same as all the other Blacks.

He sat there for a few minutes, pondering this. What if all he'd been taught by mother, and father when he was still here, was wrong? What if he had come to this realization sooner - might he have been in that bloody Order, fighting alongside his brother? No. The answer was clear as day to him. Whether or not his parents were wrong, he'd made up his mind too early - become a Death Eater too early - for anything to have changed. He paused, his mind reeling to keep up with the leaps and bounds his emotions were taking.

...But that didn't mean that he couldn't _change_. He was only human, whether Slytherin or Gryffindor, supporter or opposer to Voldemort. He might as well start saying the dark wizard's name - if he were to go through with these thoughts, it would be a clear opposition to him, and he was certain to be dismissed and killed, as Sirius had narrowly avoided just last night. If he were to oppose the- _Voldemort_, there would be nothing left of him.

But he knew that he didn't have it in him to pretend anymore, and he slumped backwards to lay upon the red and gold comforter of Sirius' bed. He could only do so much, and all the years of pretending to take what his mother and father said to heart, of covering his albeit _deep_ down affection for his brother with hatred, of blindly following a wizard like Voldemort had finally taken it's toll. He couldn't pretend any longer, and he knew that he wouldn't have to make the change - he could already feel it happening in him. He would not stand for this anymore, he knew what he needed to do to make these things stop, and he'd be damned if the reasons why would be known before he wanted them to be.

He had to kill Voldemort.


End file.
